Quotes by American Authors - Page 1490

My temperament and my instinct had told me alike that the author, who writes at his own emergency, remains and needs to remain at his private remove. I wished to be, not effaced, but invisible - actually a profound position. Perspective, the line of vision, the frame of vision - these set a distance.
Eudora Welty
She glared at me like she was about to punch me, but then she did something that surprised me even more. She kissed me."Be careful seaweed brain." She said putting on her invisible cap and disappearing.I probably would have sat there all day, trying to remember my name, but then the sea demons came.
Rick Riordan
He was just beautiful. She'd never known a man could be beautiful, but he definitely was.
Emily Jane Trent
So you’re dating Mr. Freaky Vanderperv, at least you’re not dating a guy with no skills and no interest in you sexually! Treat his kinks with respect and he will be an honest man with you always.
Roberto Hogue
I'm not an abstractionist. I'm not interested in the relationship of color or form or anything else. I'm interested only in expressing basic human emotions: tragedy, ecstasy, doom, and so on.
Mark Rothko
I wasted a lot of time being angry, time I can't get back. And now I see you, so angry about what happened to your marriage, and I just want to tell you, at some point it doesn't matter who was right and who was wrong. At some point, being angry is just another bad habit, like smoking, and you keep poisoning yourself without thinking about it.
Jonathan Tropper
I had lesser friends who would pretend to be interested in a night of catching up and then morph into giggly backstabbers at the first whiff of Polo Aftershave--woman who were lightning fast with the put-down joke or dismissive wave, whatever it took to seem more pretty or witty or larger chested to the nighly swarm of male barflies.
Kristin Gore
We are just two people. Not that much separates us. Not nearly as much as I'd thought.
Kathryn Stockett
But damn if there isn't anything sexier than a slender boy with a handgun, a fast car, a bottle of pills.
Richard Siken
Fucking is not an adequate name for what we just did there,' Irene said. 'We need a better word. Something more festive.''Fucktivities?' he offered.'Celebratio,' she said.'Funnilingus!
Daryl Gregory
Just because you're done with the past doesn't mean the past is done with you.
Paul Doiron
I don't know," Jason said with a shrug. "Maybe it's too late for me. Maybe my heart is already too far good."With a smile she said softly, "It's never too late to be good.
Randall Arthur
Being first to ask for help in a friendship takes courage and humility.
Afton Rorvik
The first morning I really sat and watched him it was a Tuesday. I know that because Tuesday is trash day for our neighborhood. Unlike me, he leaves gathering up his trash for the morning of pickup instead of doing it the night before. My alarm went off at 6 AM and I went in to start the coffee maker, and as I went about selecting a bit of fruit from the bowl on my kitchen table I looked out the window. It was just a casual glance, and the human eye is attracted to movement.
Benjamin R. Smith
The cruelest thing you can do to a person who's living in panic is to offer him or her hope that turns out false. When the crash comes its intolerable.
Robert Ludlum
Relationships can be compared to the shopping process. You shop for clothes, food, shoes, etc. You aim at getting yourself the very best things you need and carefully select the items. We can apply this same concept when we take the time to know and understand those we invite into our space. We may not know everything about them upfront but just as we try on clothes to see if they fit, so also should we evaluate those we surround ourselves with and set boundaries where applicable.
Kemi Sogunle
I amBroken single motherDisconnected loverSlow motion dresserDark secret confessorWhite flag trendProfessional dead end
Casey Renee Kiser
Five Truths About Your Inner Voice:1. It is here, always available, wherever you are, however you feel, whatever you have done.2. It is solely on your side.3. It knows what's absolutely right for you.4. It is your friend, your ally, your guide, your ultimate supporter. 5. It is always with you and for you. Whenever you're feeling perplexed, uneasy, anxious, mad, frustrated, sick, or any other other way you don't want to feel, ask your Inner Voice. Listen.
Noelle Sterne
We’re better together than we are apart. The American Dream has us looking out for ourselves even at the expense of our neighbors. That shit ain’t true, man.
Trevor D. Richardson
It’s so weird, to know you’re crazy and not be able to do anything about it, you know? It’s not like you believe yourself to be normal. You know there is a problem. But you can’t figure a way through to fixing it. Because you can’t be sure, you know?
John Green
One does silly things when one is twelve.
Cassandra Clare
I am constantly torn between killing myself and killing everyone around me.
David Levithan
The greatest healing therapy is friendship and love.
Hubert H. Humphrey
I, too, seem to be a connoisseur of rain, but it does not fill me with joy; it allows me to steep myself in a solitude I nurse like a vice I've refused to vanquish.
Julia Glass
The revolution goes on; a man does not make the revolution, not a thousand men, not an army and not a party; the revolution comes from the people as they reach toward God, and a little of God is in each person and each will not forget it. This it is the revolution when slaves shake their chains and the revolution when a strong man bends toward a weaker and says, "Here, comrade, is my arm." The revolution goes on and nothing stops it; but because the people are seeking what is good, not what is wicked or powerful or cruel or rich or venal, but simply what is good--because of that the people flounder and feel along one dark road after another. The people no more all-seeing than their rulers once were; it is in intention that they differ.
Howard Fast
The foundation stone of all philosophy is self-knowledge and being true to thy self. A person must address an inner necessity in order to realize the fundamental truth about oneself, seek self-improvement, and gain knowledge through experience.
Kilroy J. Oldster
I'm a beautiful mess of contradiction,A chaotic display of imperfection.
Sai Marie Johnson
The measure of a man lies not in his lengthy accomplishments, but in his decisions when he is faced with the certain, indisputable knowledge that he is going to die.
Mitch Rowland
Lincoln grew immeasurably as he came to think of himself as an “instrument of God’s will.
Joe L. Wheeler
Collateral learning in the way of formation of enduring attitudes, of likes and dislikes, may be and often is much more important than the spelling lesson or lesson in geography or history that is learned.
John Dewey
Tomorrow you may look up and see me as a lawyer, a doctor, business executive,teacher - or WHATEVER I BELIEVE I CAN BE !My story isn't about nice handles or quickness on the court ,but about HARD WORK, PERSEVERANCE, and FAITH! I know God's blessings ,I can accomplish anything and i mean ANYTHING!!!
Jon-Robert Holden
Far too many people on the spectrum spend most of their days with people who carry around memories of, and are often too overwhelmed by incidents of, prior misinterpretation. This is no fun. In travel you can start over, and reinvent yourself. If somehow a relationship gets weird, you can leave and go to the next town, the next block, or whatever the case may be, and try again.
Michael John Carley
Thanks to our artists, we pretend well, living under canopies of painted clouds and painted gods, in halls of marble floors across which the sung Masses paint hope in deep impatsi of echo. We make of the hollow world a fuller, messier, prettier place, but all our inventions can't create the one thing we require: to deserve any fond attention we might accidentally receive, to receive any fond attention we don't in the course of things deserve. We are never enough to ourselves because we can never be enough to another. Any one of us walks into any room and reminds its occupant that we are not the one they most want to see. We are never the one. We are never enough.
Gregory Maguire
Solitude, the safeguard of mediocrity, is to genius the stern friend, the cold, obscure shelter where moult the wings which will bear it farther than suns and stars. He who should inspire and lead his race must be defended from travelling with the souls of other men, from living, breathing, reading, and writing in the daily, time-worn yoke of their opinions. "In the morning, — solitude;" said Pythagoras; that Nature may speak to the imagination, as she does never in company, and that her favorite may make acquaintance with those divine strengths which disclose themselves to serious and abstracted thought. 'Tis very certain that Plato, Plotinus, Archimedes, Hermes, Newton, Milton, Wordsworth, did not live in a crowd, but descended into it from time to time as benefactors: and the wise instructor will press this point of securing to the young soul in the disposition of time and the arrangements of living, periods and habits of solitude.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
I learned to play the instruments of war," he said, "and paint in blood.
Cassandra Clare
This is the problem with forever friends. They know too much.
Kristin Hannah
Be polite, be professional, but have a plan to kill everyone you meet.
Oliver North
Runaways are romantic. The girls are waiflike with dyed ratty hair and baggy pants. They usually own a stray dog of the mutt variety and drag it along by a rope, plopping down in front of storefronts to beg for money from passersby. They're a mess. It is likely they'll charm you, make you think you're their best friend and savior only to end up using you and then they'll disappear. That's why they're romantic. They're there and then they're gone. Romance is always about people appearing in a flash out of nothing or people who are there and then suddenly are not. A magic trick.
Bett Williams
Children have but little charity for each other's defects.
Mark Twain
Love is all that awaits you.
Howard Falco
I have this love for Mattie. It was formed in me as he himself was formed. It has his shape, you might say. He fits it. He fits into it as he fits into his clothes. He will always fit into it. When he gets out of the car and I meet him and hug him, there he is, him himself, something of my very own forever, and my love for him goes all around him just as it did when he was a baby and a little boy and a young man grown.
Wendell Berry
Maybe in a way all living things are like flickering flames in a precarious night, always on the verge of being extinguished. Whether we kindle slowly but steadily, or go out in a brilliant burst of light and color, is our choice. Perhaps the most important choice we'll ever have.
Nenia Campbell
You felt a deep sorrow, the kind of melancholy you feel when you're in a beautiful place and the sun is going down
Thrity Umrigar
We give up the fort when there's not a man left to defend it.
General Croghan
Truly, it is in loss that we learn a thing's true value.
Jacqueline Carey
Though we have less to worry about than previous generations, we have more worry. Though we have it easier than our forefathers, we have more uneasiness. Though we have less real cause for anxiety than our predecessors, we are inwardly more anxious.
Billy Graham
No matter how much crap you gotta plow through to stay alive as a photographer, no matter how many bad assignments, bad days, bad clients, snotty subjects, obnoxious handlers, wigged-out art directors, technical disasters, failures of the mind, body, and will, all the shouldas, couldas, and wouldas that befuddle our brains and creep into our dreams, always remember to make room to shoot what you love. It’s the only way to keep your heart beating as a photographer.
Joe McNally
The proverb warns that "You should not bite the hand that feeds you." But maybe you should if it prevents you from feeding yourself.
Thomas Szasz
I wasn't actually in love, but I felt a sort of tender curiosity.
F. Scott Fitzgerald
My urge to write is an urge not to self-expressionism but to self-transcendence. My work is both bigger and smaller than I am.
Susan Sontag
Abba Marcius said, 'If you rebuke someone and do it with anger, you have allowed a passion to control you. You have not saved anyone and have destroyed yourself'.
Tim Vivian
Experience is the opposite of education.
Ashly Lorenzana
Here is the door of my mom's house, well-remembered childhood portal. Here is the yard, and a set of wires that runs from the house to a wooden pole, and some fat birds sitting together on the wires, five of them lined up like beads on an abacus.
Dan Chaon
I already live like you," Evan lifted his head and looked straight into Christian's eyes. "I'm living like you right now, without her. If she leaves me when I ask her to marry me, or at the altar, or tomorrow, I could still say I tried. I could still say I loved her, that I kissed her, I held her." Evan inhaled a deep breath, his chest swelling with the intensity of it. "Without her, I'll just rot into nothing.
Allie Burke
It's like people don't only look good when they look like a magazine. People can be aesthetically beautiful in the way sunsets and leaves and things are.
Laura Tims
I didn’t know yet how wanting to die could be a bloodsong in your body that lives with you your whole life. I didn’t know then how deeply my mother’s song had swum into my sister and into me. I didn’t know that something like wanting to die could take form in one daughter as the ability to quietly surrender, and in the other as the ability to drive into death head-on. I didn’t know we were our mother’s daughters after all.
Lidia Yuknavitch
Oh yes. You’ve done a marvelous job of succeeding at failure.
Laura Kreitzer
You want to hear it? Fine. It’s a simple story really, about a pretty girl who was pretty stupid. She let a man touch her because she was scared to say no, and then she told her parents because she was scared to say nothing. Then they were scared to do anything that might ruin their pretty little lives, so they told the girl that it was nothing. That just being touched wasn’t enough to fight for. Too scared to prove them wrong, she kept going like it was nothing, and she let more people touch her, never knowing that she was handing out pieces of herself. Or, hell, maybe she knew deep down, and she just hated herself so much that she was glad to be rid of them. And life wasn’t pretty, but it also wasn’t scary until she met a man with two names who touched her without taking and made her miss the pieces she had lost. And now things aren’t just scary, they’re fucking terrifying, and I can’t do it. I can’t live like this, knowing all that I’ve ruined and that it can’t be fixed.
Cora Carmack
That women bring home the bacon, fry it up, serve it for breakfast, and use its greasy remains to make candles for their children's science projects is hardly news. Yet how parenting responsibilities get sorted out under these conditions remains unresolved.
Jennifer Senior
Intersections are crash magnets.
Tom Vanderbilt